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A Guide to Writing Articles for the PEBA/LRS

Where to Type Your Article. 1

Standard League Writing Styles. 1

Linkage. 1

Player Names. 2

Abbreviations. 2

Formatting.. 2

General Grammatical Notes. 3

Consistency of Form... 3

Pictures. 3

Forum Posts of Articles. 4

Final Notes. 4

Where to Type Your Article

• Use the Submit News interface, Word, OpenOffice or other XML-based word processor.
• Do not use Notepad, WordPad or other plain text word processor.
• Using a 3^rd-party program like Word that will auto-save your work is recommended.

Standard League Writing Styles

• All articles are expected to be written from a fictional perspective. The perspective should be that of someone who lives within the reality of the gaming universe that we have created. Avoid referencing OOTP or OOTP-specific terminology at all costs.
• All stories should include a boldfaced in-game date. Make sure the date is appropriate to the subject being covered. A signing that occurred midway through our last sim should probably be dated on the day of or directly after that signing.
• Articles written from the perspective of a travelling beat writer should include the italicized current location of the team. If the team is on a road trip, use that location rather than the team’s home city.
• Any publication name (fictional or real) should be italicized.
• Where applicable, place the name of the author and publication on the same line.
• When writing about a trade that has been posted in the forums but not yet processed, make sure to treat this as breaking news.
• If you wish to reference real world current events, take into account the fact that we are years ahead of the real world date within the game. Election results that just occurred in real life would be old news to someone living within our game’s fictional universe.

Linkage

• All league-related proper names must have their first appearance hyperlinked. This includes players, personnel (including your own name), teams and leagues. Ballpark names can also now be linked from StatsLab’s Metrics à Parks page.
• To link a proper name, highlight the name’s pre-hyperlinked text in the HTML reports. Copy that text and paste it into your article. Do not type the name and link it later!
• Alternatively, you can use your word processor to add links to your article. These links will copy over to Submit News.
• Finally, you can manually link text within Submit News. First, copy the URL of the page your want to link to. Next, highlight the text to be linked in Submit News and then click the “Insert/Edit link” button located on the bottom-left of the icon rows. Paste the URL you copied into the window that pops up and then click the “Insert” button.
• When linking a player’s name, you have a choice of linking to his OOTP or StatsLab player page. The recommended method is to link non-rookie major leaguers to their StatsLab pages, and all others to their OOTP pages.
• Pictures of players/personnel should be linked to their respective OOTP/StatsLab page. See the “Pictures” section below for details.
• Owners should make every effort to hyperlink references to league events, statistics, facts and history. A common example would be a game score, which should be linked to the game’s box score. A reference to team finances can link to that team’s Financial Report, while a reference to a previous season can link to the team’s history page.
• PEBA owners are highly encouraged to link references to processed trades to their respective entry in The PEBA Trade Tally.
• All owners are encouraged to sprinkle “Easter Egg” links throughout their articles. These are bonus links that point to non-PEBA-related websites. They may be humorous in nature, informative, thought-provoking or just plain fun. Please avoid linking to material that might be deemed offensive, and please use good judgment when considering linking to websites dealing with hot-button, polarizing issues.

Player Names

• The hyperlinked first appearance of a player’s name should always be copied and pasted from the OOTP or StatsLab reports pages.
• While you may manually type out subsequent appearances of a player’s name, it is recommended to continue copying and pasting the name from the reports.
• A number of player names feature diacritics. Whenever you’re dealing with a name that features an accent mark, tilde or other diacritic, always copy and paste the name from the reports. Diacritics must be included in your articles.
• When copying names of players with nicknames from the reports, replace the apostrophes (‘) surrounding the nickname with quotations marks (“).
• After the first appearance, nicknames do not need to be surrounded by quotation marks.
• Copy/pasting text from the reports may result in odd font styles/sizes transferring over to your article. If this happens, please highlight all of your article’s text when you are finished typing and change the font style/size to a unified standard.
• Firefox users are highly encouraged to install the Copy Plain Text extension. Once installed, you can right-click on highlighted text and select “Copy as Plain Text”. This will allow you to transfer text to your article without inserting hyperlinks or messing up your font style/size.

Abbreviations

• Player position abbreviations should be fully capitalized (e.g. “1B”, “CF”, etc.).
• Single-digit numbers are fine to type out. You should generally use numerals for double-digit and greater numbers (e.g. “33” instead of “thirty-three”).
• Most baseball statistics should be abbreviated. A few (e.g. “home runs”, “runs”) can be typed out at your option, but it is generally preferable to abbreviate.
• Most abbreviated baseball statistics should be fully capitalized (e.g. “ERA”, “AVG”, etc.). There are a few exceptions to this rule (e.g. “EqA”, “wOBA”). For a list of baseball statistical abbreviations, reference the Glossary in StatsLab.
• Do not add an “s” at the end of a statistical abbreviation to indicate plurality (e.g. use “50 HR”, not “50 HRs”).
• While it can be used sparingly for effect, you should generally avoid turning abbreviations into verbs (e.g. “OPS’d”).
• Always type the name/abbreviation of any numerical stat you include in your article.
• When referencing a league level, you may either type out the full name of the level (e.g. “Triple-A”) or abbreviate the level (e.g. “AAA”). Do not use both styles (e.g. “Triple-AAA”).
• Fully typed-out minor league level names should be treated as a proper noun (e.g. capitalize the “T” in “Triple-A”) and should have a hyphen connecting to the letter “A”.
• Although OOTP abbreviates the LRS level as “INT”, articles written from a Japanese perspective should refer to the LRS as “the majors”, “major leagues”, etc. Articles written from an American perspective may view the LRS differently (e.g. “Japanese league”).

Formatting

• There should always be two spaces between the end of a sentence and the start of a new sentence.
• There should always be a single blank line between paragraphs.
• Do not place any spaces/tabs at the start or end of a paragraph (NOTE: Normal grammatical rules would call for a tab at the start of a paragraph. We ignore this rule for HTML formatting purposes).
• Bear in mind that font size and color are two things that do not transfer over from 3^rd-party word processors to Submit News. Add custom font sizes/colors after you have copied over your text to Submit News.

General Grammatical Notes

• The first letters of starts of sentences and proper nouns should always be capitalized, as should many abbreviations. Avoid capitalizing the first letter of random words in the middle of sentences that do not meet these criteria.
• While there is a place for its sparing use, it is usually preferable to emphasize text by italicizing it rather than typing it in all caps.
• Avoid run-on sentences. Rather than overusing commas, break long thoughts into two or more separate sentences via periods, question marks and/or exclamation points.
• You may also use semicolons to link related clauses, but don’t overuse this punctuation. Typically you’ll be better off starting a new sentence.
• When using ellipses, use only three dots (…), place a space between the end of the ellipsis and the word following the ellipsis, and do not capitalize the word following the ellipsis unless it is the start of a new sentence.
• When breaking up quoted text, use a comma to continue a broken single sentence and a period, question mark or exclamation point to join to a new quoted sentence.
• Example of single-sentence quoted text continuation: “We won this game,” said Coach Wilkins, “because we played hard.”
• Example of multi-sentence quoted text continuation: “We will win this game,” said Coach Wilkins. “Our boys will come ready to play.”
• Once you have referred to a full proper name, you can generally shorten that name for the rest of the article. For example, after initially typing out “General Manager Craig Stayman”, you do not need to type that full title and name out again. Instead, shorten future appearances (e.g. “GM Stayman” or “Mr. Stayman”). This rule can be bent for effect, but it is generally proper to avoid repeating full names and titles.
• Avoid reusing phrases. If you described a player as a “speed demon on the base paths”, do not describe another player in the same way later in the article. Instead, find a different method of characterizing the second player’s speed.

Consistency of Form

• If you begin using a certain writing style in your article, be sure to continue to use that style throughout the remainder of the article. For instance, once you start by writing “HR”, don’t later change up by typing out “home run”.
• The same rule applies to punctuation. If you begin using the style “MR Tom Jones – Text”, don’t later change to “MR – Bob Smith: Text”.
• This rule also applies to formatting. If you boldface and underline one section header, make sure to apply the same formatting style to all section headers.
• Consistency of form should carry over to future articles written by the same fictional author/publication. For instance, if your author pens an article entitled “Team Notes: June 1^st, 2011”, future articles in this series should use the same naming convention (e.g. “Team Notes: July 14^th, 2011”).

Pictures

• Owners should try to include at least one picture in each of their articles.
• To insert a picture, you will need to copy and paste its URL into the “Insert/Edit pictures” dialogue:
• In Internet Explorer: To get the URL of a picture, right-click on it and select “Properties” from the pop-up menu. Highlight the text in the “Address (URL)” field, right-click on that highlighted text and select “Copy” from the pop-up menu.
• In Firefox: To get the URL of a picture, right-click on it and select “Copy Image Location” from the pop-up menu.
• Once you’ve copied the picture’s URL, in Submit News, place your cursor where you'd like it to go and click the "Insert/Edit image" button located on the bottom-left of the icon rows. Paste the location of your picture into the "URL" field ([ctrl-V] for PC, [command-v] for Mac).
• Pictures placed on the same line as text should be either left or right aligned. You can change the alignment of a picture via the “Alignment” pull-down menu.
• All pictures should have a title added that will appear when the mouse cursor hovers over the picture. Click the “Advanced” tab and enter your text into the “Title” field.
• Wait to paste in pictures until after you’ve transferred your text to the Submit News interface. Do not paste your pictures into Word or other 3^rd-party word processor, as they will not transfer over with your text when you paste to Submit News.
• Pictures of players/personnel should be linked to their OOTP/StatsLab reports page. To link a picture, first copy the URL of the page your want to link to. Next, click on the picture in Submit News and then click the “Insert/Edit link” button located on the bottom-left of the icon rows. Paste the URL you copied into the window that pops up and then click the “Insert” button.
• Non-OOTP-generated pictures may also inserted in the same manner as listed above. You may have to adjust their size, though (see note below).
• Pictures aligned to the left/right of text should be no larger than 200 pixels horizontally/vertically. Pictures on their own line should be no larger than 300 pixels horizontally/vertically. Use the “Dimensions” field in the “Insert/Edit image” dialogue to scale your picture. Enter “200” or “300” into the first box if your picture is larger horizontally, or into the second box if your picture is larger vertically (you can leave the other box blank). Pictures taken from the HTML reports do not need to be resized.
• Provide enough space between pictures so that they don’t overlap.
• You may also upload locally stored pictures to the PEBA server. Please use this option only for pictures you intend to use more than once. To do this, click the “Upload” button on the right-hand side of the “Insert/Edit image” dialogue and follow the instructions.

Forum Posts of Articles

• Wait to post the forum copy of articles until the homepage version has been posted.
• Once it’s posted, highlight the homepage version’s text (omitting the “Written By” and real world date lines) and copy it. Paste that text into a new thread in the appropriate writing sub-forum.
• Depending on the browser you use, it may be necessary to delete picture titles where pictures were inserted into the text.
• Owners are not required to link or format forum versions of their articles, though they are welcome to do so at their option.

Final Notes

• Always proofread your articles before sending them in! One good trick is to read what you’ve written aloud. If it doesn’t sound right to your ears, it can probably be tweaked and improved upon.
• Learn to use your word processor’s “Replace All” feature. This is an incredibly powerful tool. It will allow you to adjust common errors you discover upon proofreading in one fell swoop. It will also allow you to save yourself time. For instance, instead of repeatedly stopping to copy/paste the name “Martínez” into your article, you can instead shorthand his name as “ma1”. When you’re finished with your article, open the “Replace All” dialogue, type “ma1” into the “Find What” field and type “Martínez” into the “Replace With” field (NOTE: Field names may be different in your word processor). Hit the “Replace All” button and voila! You’ve inserted the name everywhere it needs to go.
• Pay attention to edits made to your articles and adjust future articles as warranted. If you’re typing out “secondbaseman” and see that it’s being edited to “second baseman”, make a note to type “second baseman” in the future.
• While you’re certainly welcome to incorporate your personality into your articles, avoid using your articles as a platform to espouse your personal opinions/beliefs on non-PEBA-related matters.
• Never use your articles as an outlet to vent your frustrations with another owner.
• Qualitative assessments of other teams can and should be a part of our article landscape. Sometimes these assessments will be critical in nature. If you’re the author of a piece that may be critical of another team, please consider the feelings of that team’s owner. Touch base with him before submitting your article to receive his blessing and make sure that your criticism is taken in context. If you’re the subject of a piece that’s critical of your team, don’t be quick to take insult. The author’s criticism may provide you with ideas on new strategies to try.
• Most importantly, take pride in your writing! Your articles are the heart and soul of this league. They are what has put us on the map and why we have developed a large following of interested non-members. You should want to put your best foot forward with each article that you write. Don’t be satisfied with just turning something in and collecting your CP. Strive for your submission to meet the highest standards. You will have the Commissioner’s thanks for making his job a whole lot easier!

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